senioure

can this play vids at vga resolution @ 30 frames/sec, with bitrate of 1200 kbps, and genrally speaking how is the video watching experience on it?

dkong

Although this is an older thread, thought I'd jump in anyway.

The iPAQ is not a VGA device, don't expect video playback to be comparable with a VGA device, however, taken for what it is, the video playback is fine.

The installed Windows Media Player is limited and as far as I can tell, can't install add-ons, however there are players such as DivX Player, CorePlayer etc. that can play different formats. For example, CorePlayer which originally was TCPMP (and free) is supposed to have the ability to play YouTUBE videos, which I believe are in FLV format, although I've hadn't had any luck so far with that even though CorePlayer does pop up and appears to read the file, it puts me in a long endless wait.

DivX Player does a fine job of playing back DivX encoded videos (normally have AVI extensions), however for videos with AC-3 encoding, it is picture only. CorePlayer is supposed to have an upgrade for that problem in the works and can play the more advanced DivX videos that DivX Player currently can't.

With that said, for what it is, the playback is acceptable for casual viewing, well to me anything on a tiny screen is casual viewing. The sound reproduction is only fair as the sole speaker is in the back (not good if you're holding the device). The solution is to use a pair of headphones and if wires bother you, try BlueTooth headphones, I use a set of Jabra headphones which the iPAQ 111 was immediately able to recognise and use, actually that's a vast improvement over my old 4150 as it would "see" the Bluetooth headphones, but I never could get them to work with that device and ended up using the adapter, which is a pain.

The other difference I can see in the quality of playback between the 4150 and the 111 is that the newer device is better at rendering a smooth playback (more processing power), but I would have liked a better screen.

DAVID